Event Title

Presenter Information

Session

Technical Session IX: Advanced Technologies II

Abstract

Software, more than any other engineering discipline, allows extensive systems to be created with relatively little effort. This leveraging of engineering time is often aimed at making a software system as useful, flexible, and feature-laden as possible; but the complexity that inherently attends such efforts renders them unreliable, difficult to maintain, and nearly impossible to update. As the space industry moves toward modularity and “Plug-and-Play” concepts, significant discipline is required to control this new complexity. Layering is the tool that accomplishes this end. These issues are dealt with in the AstroLogic™ software suite for modular spacecraft. AstroLogic is a “Plug-and-Sense” architecture, meaning that it encompasses the exchange of functional information (as Plug-and-Play does for personal computers) as well as physical information relevant to a physical vehicle such as a spacecraft. It was developed to deal autonomously with the fact that the modules in a modular spacecraft do not know a priori what other modules will be part of the system or where they will be relative to each other. All information exchanged must be done autonomously with minimal or no custom software, or else the advantages of modularity are lost.

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Software, more than any other engineering discipline, allows extensive systems to be created with relatively little effort. This leveraging of engineering time is often aimed at making a software system as useful, flexible, and feature-laden as possible; but the complexity that inherently attends such efforts renders them unreliable, difficult to maintain, and nearly impossible to update. As the space industry moves toward modularity and “Plug-and-Play” concepts, significant discipline is required to control this new complexity. Layering is the tool that accomplishes this end. These issues are dealt with in the AstroLogic™ software suite for modular spacecraft. AstroLogic is a “Plug-and-Sense” architecture, meaning that it encompasses the exchange of functional information (as Plug-and-Play does for personal computers) as well as physical information relevant to a physical vehicle such as a spacecraft. It was developed to deal autonomously with the fact that the modules in a modular spacecraft do not know a priori what other modules will be part of the system or where they will be relative to each other. All information exchanged must be done autonomously with minimal or no custom software, or else the advantages of modularity are lost.